Deep Application Crawling

1. A computer-implemented process for extracting data from an application, comprising process actions of: crawling the application while capturing static data embedded within the application; analyzing the application to discover user controls in the application; generating a navigation script that automatically activates combinations of the user controls; instrumenting the application with logging code that automatically logs all user actions and data shown to a user and is invoked whenever dynamic data is displayed to the user or downloaded to the application; using a navigation tool to input the navigation script into the instrumented application while running the entire instrumented application in an emulator to capture the dynamic data that is displayed to the user or downloaded to the application; combining the static data and the dynamic data; and using the combined static and dynamic data captured from the application to perform a function; wherein the process actions are performed by a computing device.

2. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 wherein the function is a search.

3. The computer-implemented process of claim 2 wherein the captured static data is extracted from binary data or source code of the application.

4. The computer-implemented process of claim 2 wherein the captured static data is extracted from one or more resource files associated with the application.

5. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 , wherein the user controls further comprise buttons, menus and drop down lists.

6. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 , wherein the dynamic data is data downloaded by the application from the Internet.

7. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 wherein using the captured static data to perform a function further comprises using the captured static data to perform a search for data in one or more applications on a computing device.

8. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 wherein using the captured static data captured from the application to perform a function further comprises using the captured static data to perform a search for data in one or more applications on a network.

9. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 wherein the logging code that automatically logs all user actions and data shown to the user is only invoked whenever data is displayed to the user or downloaded to the application.

10. The computer-implemented process of claim 1 wherein the function is a search of data on a computing cloud.

11. A computer-implemented process for extracting data from an application, comprising process actions of: analyzing the application to discover user controls in the application; generating a navigation script that automatically activates combinations of the user controls; instrumenting the application with a logging code that automatically logs all user actions and data shown to a user and that is invoked whenever data is displayed to the user or downloaded to the application; running the full instrumented application in an emulator while simulating user input using the navigation script to capture dynamic data that is displayed to the user or downloaded to the application; combining the captured dynamic data with static data obtained from data embedded in the application and storing the combined captured data in a database; using the combined dynamic data and static data in the database to perform a function; wherein the process actions are performed by a computing device.

12. The computer-implemented process of claim 11 wherein the logging code is only invoked when data is displayed to the user or downloaded to the application.

13. The computer-implemented process of claim 11 wherein the emulator is injected with logging code to capture the dynamic data.

14. The computer-implemented process of claim 11 wherein the captured dynamic data is data shown to a user.

15. The computer-implemented process of claim 11 wherein the dynamic data is data that is downloaded from a network to the application.

16. The computer-implemented process of claim 11 wherein the dynamic data depends on geographic location.

17. The computer-implemented process of claim 11 wherein the captured dynamic data is used to alert a user.

18. A system for extracting data from an application, comprising: a computing device; a computer program comprising program modules executed by the computing device, wherein the computing device is directed by the program modules of the computer program to: crawl the application while capturing static data embedded within the application; generate a navigation script by analyzing the application to discover all user controls in the application; instrument the application with logging code that automatically logs all user actions and data shown to a user and is only invoked whenever data is displayed to the user or downloaded to the application; run the full instrumented application in an emulator while simulating user input using the navigation script to capture dynamic data that is displayed to the user or downloaded to the application; combine the static data and the dynamic data; provide the combined static data and dynamic data to an engine to allow the engine to perform a function of the engine.

19. The system of claim 18 wherein the engine is an advertisement engine and wherein the function of the advertisement engine is to select an advertisement specific to the application.

20. The system of claim 18 wherein the engine is a recommendation engine and wherein the function of the recommendation engine is to recommend goods and services.